DISCOURSE.

How sacred is the sympathy of sorrow! It is the "touch of nature" which "makes the whole world kin." It melted the humanity of JESUS, as He stood by that new grave; and it is with Him, now, that He has passed into the heavens," and stands where Stephen saw Him, "a great High Priest," "touched with the feeling of our infirmities."

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The river which, at first, went out of Eden is salt and bitter since the Fall. It is the river, now, of tears, and waters still the world which man inhabits. The electric spark which, in twelve hours, had flashed your sorrow on my heart, opened its secret sources and overflowed my manhood. I have wept among my children; I have wept beside his grave; and I am here to weep with you.

It was an ancient Roman superstition that the place was sacred which the lightning struck. How sacred must the spot be ever held where I now stand, on which the lambent flame of love from God did but dissolve the bonds which held it here, to set the spirit of our darling free, and bid it welcome to the heaven which CHRIST had opened for it! And how cold and dead must be our hearts, if, in the light of

such an Euthanasia, they be not waked from their dull dreams of earth, and do not imp their wings to take the upward flight by which he went to be with JESUS! Oh, that the simple words which I am now (please God,) to speak, may have, through grace, the unction of his life; may bear, through grace, the urgent warning of his death; may win your souls, through grace, to holiness, with the attraction which drew him to Heaven!

WILLIAM CROSWELL was born in Hudson, New York, on the 7th day of November, 1804. He was among that great company of the preachers who were not born in the Church which their hearts have afterwards embraced, and to which their lives have been devoted. He was thus not baptized till 1813, before which time his father had removed to Albany, and had become a Churchman. A nobler Churchman

does not live, nor one that has done better service to the Church, than the Rector of Trinity Church, New Haven. The lines which William has recorded with the date of his own two-and-thirtieth birthday, need no deduction on the score of filial love, but are as true as if they were not written by a son.

"My father, proud am I to bear

Thy face, thy form, thy stature;
But happier far, might I but share
More of thy better nature;
Thy patient progress after good,
All obstacles disdaining;
Thy courage, faith, and fortitude,

And spirit uncomplaining.

"Then, for the day that I was born
Well might I joy, and borrow
No longer of the coming morn
Its trouble or its sorrow:
Content I'd be to take my chance
In either world, possessing,
For my complete inheritance,

Thy virtues and thy blessing."

It is not now the time to dwell upon his childhood or his youth. He was, throughout, a loving and obedient son, singularly true and just in thought and word and deed, transparent in his conscientiousness as purest chrystal. As an instance of it: when a child at school, he was called up by his master, and sharply reproved for talking. "No, sir," his answer was, "I was not talking; but I was just going to!" The boy was "father of the man." He was devout from his childhood, and had read the Bible so constantly that most of it was in his memory. The memories of home have never found a fitter utterance than in the lines,-worthy of Burns and like him,-which he addressed to his when he had left it for the world.

"I knew my father's chimney-top,

Though nearer to my heart than eye;
And watched the blue smoke reeking up
Between me and the winter sky.

Wayworn, I traced the homeward track
My wayward youth had left with joy;
Unchanged in soul I wandered back,
A man in years, in heart a boy.

"I thought upon its cheerful hearth,
And cheerful hearts' untainted glee;

And felt, of all I'd seen on earth,

This was the dearest spot to me."

And seldom has a pious mother's influence been owned more feelingly and faithfully than in the lines addressed to his, when he was thirty years of age:

"Oft, as I muse on all the wrong,

The silent grief, the secret pain,
My froward youth hath caused, I long
To live my childhood o'er again.

And yet they are not all in vain,

The lessons which thy love then taught;

Nor always has it dormant lain,

The fire from thy example caught.

"And now, as feelings all divine

With deepest power my spirit touch,

I feel as if some prayer of thine,
My mother were availing much.
Thus be it ever more and more,

Till it be thine in bliss to see

The hopes, with which thy heart runs o'er
In fondest hours, fulfilled in me."

We are reminded of Saint Augustine's mother by these lines, and feel the assurance which was given to her, that the child of prayers and tears, like hers, could not be lost. His early education was received in New Haven and its neighborhood. He was, at one period, the Catechumen of him whom the whole Church rejoices in as Bishop of Western New York, Doctor Delancey, then a student in Yale College; and he never ceased to speak of his instructions with the most affectionate and grateful reverence. He

* He was prepared for college by an excellent teacher, Mr. Joel Jones, since greatly distinguished as Mayor of the city of Philadelphia, a Judge in its highest Courts, and President of Girard College.

was himself, also, a graduate of the same ancient and distinguished University, having received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1822. His first Communion was at the Christmas in that year. He did not become a Candidate for Orders till 1826. Though evidently destined for the ministry, his diffidence and self-distrust kept him back. For a while, he contemplated the practice of medicine as his profession. His theological studies were pursued, in part, at the General Seminary, but chiefly under the direction of the excellent Bishop of Connecticut, whom, now my brother, it is my pleasure also to acknowledge as my Master in theology. It was in 1826 that our intimate relations commenced; and man has never been in closer bonds with man, than he with me, for five-and-twenty years. A letter from him to a mutual friend, the witness and the sharer of our earliest years of happiness, brings down the tokens of his unreserving confidence and perfect love within the latest fortnight of his life. I do not hesitate to speak thus personally, because your invitation to me, to preach here, is predicated mainly on these intimate relations; and, only for their dear sake, could I have left my duties to be with you.

He came to Hartford when I was then Professor in Washington (now Trinity) College, at Bishop Brownell's instance, to be associated with me in the direction of the Episcopal Watchman. I remember, as if it were but yesterday, our earliest meeting at a hearth as bright and blessed as was ever kindled

* When I name Dr. Sumner's, how many hearts will answer! She, who was its chiefest joy, was taken from her loved ones with as little warning as our dear mutual friend. 'How grows, in Paradise, our store!"

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